


The Living Impaired Support Group, Atlantis Chapter

by coffeebuddha



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 23:32:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeebuddha/pseuds/coffeebuddha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John brought more than just Holland's dog tags through the gate with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Living Impaired Support Group, Atlantis Chapter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [topetine](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=topetine).



If anyone were ever to bother to ask Holland his opinion on the matter, he would say that Atlantis is probably least lonely for those who aren't, technically speaking, alive.

"You're very lucky," Goa'an tells Nolan, the newest member of their little group. "It was much more likely that you would have ended up in the Beyond. Terrible place to visit, much less spend the rest of eternity."

Nolan scoffs and arches an eyebrow at him and Corporal Forrest adds with a full body shiver that makes her edges wisp slightly into curlicues, "Cherubs," as if that explains everything.

It doesn't, not any more than it had when Goa'an had first said the same to Holland when they'd first met in the aftermath of Atlantis coming back to life. Now though, when Nolan scrunches his face up in confusion, Holland just nods along with Goa'an when he flips an impatient hand, says, "They _bite_ ," and changes the topic to some experiment that's going on in the labs that Holland is certain he would need at least fifty more IQ points to begin to understand. Nolan had been a scientist before he'd gotten over excited while eating and choked on a chunk of something that looked like a pink brussel sprout a week ago and Goa'an was some kind of math prodigy before he'd been crushed under a puddlejumper 10,847 years ago.

Within a few minutes of their back and forth, Forrest looks as out of it as he feels.

Her eyes go distant and, just for a moment when she tilts her head to the side and nods, he can see where her face was mostly eaten away by corrosive acid: the deep hollow between cheekbone and jaw mostly uninterrupted by teeth, the empty gap where a sweet button nose should be, the last few scraggly strands of dark hair falling in front of eyeless sockets. There are ugly pits in the gleaming white of her bones, and Holland thinks that if he could read them like braille, they might spell out the chemicals that killed her. Then she blinks and she's the picture of the perfect girl next door again, all wholesome innocence and smooth skin and pretty smile and never a day older than twenty-two.

Holland doesn't know what his own face looks like. He can't pick up his reflection in a mirror for obvious reasons and as for asking someone? It's impossible to try to even imagine describing Forrest to herself, and equally impossible to ask someone else to do the same for him. Forrest looks up as if she can feel his attention on her, and he grins and pushes a small draft her way that momentarily makes her form blur and startles a laugh out of her.

The edge of it catches Keller on the arm when she walks past them--would walk straight  _through_ Nolan, except Goa'an scolds him out of the way at the last moment--and goosebumps spring up on her forearm, but she doesn't seem to notice anything wrong.

"So what about him and his deal," Nolan asks, nodding sharply at Holland. When he sees he has his attention, he says, "I don't recognize you from the expedition and you're sure as hell not an Ancient."

Holland shrugs, a lazy, Sheppardish gesture that he is much more prone to these days than he ever was when he was alive, and hooks a thumb back behind them to where Sheppard is--yet again--stretched out unconscious on a gurney; McKay is pacing back and forth next to him and grumbling under his breath, probably rehearsing what he's going to yell when Sheppard wakes up. "Shep brought me with him."

"What, you were his one personal item," asks Nolan. Holland wonders if there's a special class where they teach doctors to inject that level of scorn into their voices or if it comes naturally.

"Something like that," Forrest says, her shit eating grin somewhat innocuous on her angelic face.

"Captain Holland is bound to his identification tags, which Colonel Sheppard is in possession of," Goa'an explains, voice calm and slow as if speaking to a child. "When Sheppard carried the tags into the city, he brought Holland with him.

"A fact," Goa'an adds with a small, happy smile that makes his lined face look young, "that I am quite grateful for."

"I like it here a shitload better than Antarctica, that's for damn sure," Holland says, leaning slightly so that his shoulder brushes Goa'an's. There's nothing as substantial as touch about it; the closest Holland can come to explaining it, it's like walking outside on a hot, dry day and tasting the ozone in the air from an approaching thunderstorm. Something like a blush tinges the tips of Goa'an's ears anyway, and Holland grins a little wider at him.

He feels all warm and gooey for a few seconds, right up until Nolan insists on ruining it by asking, "Why would the colonel have your dog tags? Aren't those supposed to be sent to your next of kin?"

Forrest looks pointedly over at the infirmary bed, where McKay has abandoned his pacing in favor of smoothing Sheppard's wild hair back away from his forehead. Even unconscious, Sheppard's head's head tilts toward his touch and a deep line etched between his eyebrows eases, and McKay's grumbling turns a little fond and exasperated. 

"Are you fucking kidding me?" she asks. "Aren't you supposed to be the smart one? Why do you _think_?"

Nolan sputters something, incoherent and indignant, but Holland ignores him. Instead, he leans back into Goa'an and closes his eyes as the energy crackles through him, making him feel alive.

 


End file.
